Automated Milling Path Tracking and CAM-ROB Integration for Industrial Redundant Manipulators

The present paper explores the industrial capabilities of a CAM-ROB system implementation based on a commercial CAD/CAM system (NXTM) for an industrial robotic workcell of eight joints, committed to the rapid prototyping of 3D CAD-defined models. The workcell consists of a KUKA TM KR15/2 manipulator assembled on a linear track and synchronized with a rotary table. A redundancy resolution scheme is developed to deal with the redundancies due to the additional joints of the robot, plus the one from the symmetry axis of the milling tool. During the path tracking, the use of these redundancies is optimized by adjusting two performance criterion vectors related to singularity avoidance and maintenance of a preferred reference posture, as secondary tasks to be done. In addition, two suitable fuzzy inference engines adjust the weight of each joint in these tasks. The developed system is validated in a real prototyping of a carving.